Nikon Coolpix S800c Android camera first look

Smartphones have quickly become the most serious challenge to face the conventional compact digital camera since they first emerged onto the market. It's no exaggeration to say that all the big camera makers are becoming desperate to develop camera models that can stand up to this challenge. Nikon's response is the Coolpix S800c - the first camera from a major manufacturer to be openly based on the Android mobile operating system.

There are several reasons why smartphones have become so compelling as photographic tools: they're devices that people tend to have with them at all times and they are well connected to mobile data services to allow uploading and sharing of images. An additional benefit has come from the emergence of apps and the platforms through which they're sold which have encouraged third-party developers to create software adding new capabilities to the devices they run on. From Instagram to Angry Birds, apps have encouraged people to use their Smartphones for all sorts of things the hardware makers couldn't have predicted.

This seemingly boundless flexibility comes in stark contrast to conventional cameras, which tend to offer the same capabilities and features on the day they're consigned to a dusty shelf as they had when they were taken out of the box. The S800c is a full Android 2.3 (known as Gingerbread) device, meaning it can run any apps that an equivalent smartphone could offer - so you can run Photoshop Express to spruce-up your images, rather than being dependent on the manufacturer-supplied processing options. For that matter, there's nothing to stop you passing the time with a quick game of Temple Run or Fruit Ninja.

Compact cameras do still have some advantages though - they tend to have larger sensors (which means better image quality, particularly in lower light), and they tend to have optical zooms, giving greater photographic flexibility. They also tend to come with removable memory, meaning you can easily expand and swap-out the storage of your camera - something most smartphones don't allow. The S800c offers the same 10x zoom lens and 16MP backlit CMOS sensor as the Coolpix S6300, meaning you get a proper compact camera as well as the capabilities of a fully-functioning tablet computer. For perspective, the S6300 had a list price of $199 at launch, compared to the $349 Nikon is asking for the S800c.

Nikon Coolpix S800c key specifications

16MP 1/2.3"-type BSI CMOS sensor

25-250mm equivalent F3.2-5.8 lens

3.5" WVGA OLED touchscreen

Android v2.3 operating system

Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and GPS

2GB of internal memory (690MB of this for Apps)

Up to 8fps continuous shooting

1080p30 video

Apps such as Instagram and Hipstamatic have made a virtue of smartphones' generally disappointing cameras. It'll be interesting to see whether any app developers will develop apps that take advantage of the better camera that the S800c offers. In the meantime, the only app Nikon offers is its exisiting 'My Picture Town' app for uploading to its cloud storage service of the same name.

In addition to apps, the use of Android means the S800c gains all the capabilities of the operating system. As such, it has well-established tools for connecting to Wi-Fi networks and gives a choice of browsers, so you can even log on to Wi-Fi networks that require a web form to be filled-in. This means you can access your email and browse the web from the camera, if you need to research something you just photographed. The S800c also has GPS capabilities, meaning you can add location data to your images as well as making use of the many navigation and mapping apps available for Android.

In addition to letting you run apps, the S800c allows you to check your mail, or perhaps browse dpreview from your camera.

Battery life is pretty disappointing at just 140 shots per charge (when tested to CIPA standards), but the S800c has an advantage over most smartphones of having a removable battery. This means that, unlike most smartphones, you can swap a charged battery in when the existing one is exhausted. The small EN-EL12 battery offers 3.8Wh of power. For perspective, the Nikon S8000 managed to get 210 shots per charge from the same battery.

Unlike most smartphones, the S800c retains the ability to use SD cards and a removable battery, in this case a 3.8Wh EN-EL12.

At 140 shots per charge, the camera's lifespan isn't great (and the CIPA tests do not include time spent web browsing), but at least you can slot a spare battery in if you need to.

Gingerbread isn't the latest version of Android, with 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) taking hold on flagship smartphones and 4.1 (Jelly Bean) on its way, but it is the most widely supported. Nikon isn't clear on whether it might upgrade to one of the newer versions of the operating system - enabling use of the Chrome web browser. The majority of current apps are compatible with 2.3, however.

Hacker's delight

In addition to the intended app capabilities, a camera running such a common mobile operating system is a big deal because it opens up all sorts of unofficial customization, especially if the Android 'hacking' community takes an interest. Groups such as CyanogenMod offer custom ROMs (modified versions of the underlying firmware) for a wide range of Android phones and tablets. These versions offer modifications such as CPU overclocking and other performance and interface enhancements. CyanogenMod also usually makes the latest Android version available on many devices before the manufacturers or telecom-providers do. There’s no reason why the same thing could not be done on the S800c, so we may well see Android 4.1 ‘Jelly Bean’ running on a Nikon rather sooner than later, with the Google Now 'personalized search application' telling you what the traffic is like on your way home from your photo excursion.

Handling and first impressions

Camera control is essentially via the touchscreen (aside from zoom and shutter) – our first impressions are that it’s responsive and looks quite intuitive. The camera can connect to Wi-Fi hotspots directly, and will be able to set up a peer-to-peer connection with smartphones to transfer images to them, if they're running the Nikon apps for Android or iOS. You can also run Nikon's 'My Picture Town' app to upload images directly to the company's cloud hosting service, but this makes more sense for backup than anything else.

When you turn the S800c on you reach a simple menu screen with the choice of going straight to the camera. However, if you choose to go through to the Android home screen, the camera can be accessed just as the camera on any other Android device would be - by opening the camera app. Based on our use the S800c seems powerful enough to jump to the camera very quickly, though we didn't time it.

Because you've got the familiar apps for whichever social networking services you use, you can send images from the S800c to those sites just as easily as you would from any smartphone. It’s a directly-comparable transformative experience towards using a compact camera as the iPhone was for many mobile phone users. Suddenly you have a device that acts as a little portable computer on the back, and a pretty decently-specced camera on the front. Our biggest concern is the price (which is significantly higher in Europe than in North America).

Comments

I get this for Christmas and do love the shots and video this camera takes. I did get my smartphone based on its amazing camera because its always with me .:) so I really didn't need another, but the appeal of uploading things to the internet because of the android is nice. I am looking for a remote for this device so I can usr it on a tripod. Anyone with info on that???

This is just right! I can't take a steady shot with my Android phone - holding steady while touching screen BAD! But, I love that I can edit shots on my Android with Camera FX, and then upload them to Facebook, Google+, or other sharing service. This Nikon camera does it all!! Climb on board this wagon or be left behind!!

People are looking primarily for compactness in phone. Hence this is not a phone but could inter-operate with one.

I say this is a draft for Nikon, but imagine a professional using a DSLR equipped with Android, having a phone sharing the 3g connection through wifi in his pocket. He could use any professional photography tools that would be available on android. All these apps run straight on the camera and Nikon does not have to develop them. I doubt anyone would really want to place calls from a D800.

I think phone company should partner Canon/Nikon/Apple, etc to make a phone with bigger image sensor and with a mechanism where you can attach a small zoom lens ( a new mount for phone!!), then this will kill the digital compact market!!

QNX? Really? Is anyone still using this OS? There are many reliable OSes that rarely crash. Android or other OSes using the Linux kernal would be great. The only reason there are no QNX viruses is there aren't enough machines running QNX to make it worth the hacker's time.

I think Apple missed the boat with this one.. I cant imagine Pentax, Sony, or Canon wanting to partner with them .. Maybe Olympus would like too as a kind of life line ..

I dont see how adding functionality to a device can be a negative thing. Point and shoots are a good platform to test on, more and more recently I have cursed my phones camera quality and wished I had a decent camera with an internet connection and apps so I can upload better quality images sooner.

Personally I think its a great idea, given a little time and refinement it will develop into something we all end up benefiting from, the obvious plus to a mobile OS is that you can incorporate tried and tested internet and network solutions, be it mobile data or wifi, also a huge amount of useful apps, imagine Flickr, Facebook or Photobucket, shoot photos, immediate upload to online account, could even shoot with out on board storage. About time this pushed ahead.

I find this a little odd. Android is an OS for doing everything and the camera is a piece of hardware for a specific task. they dont seem to go together. I dont need to be able to play angry birds on my camera. Now if it replaced a mobile phone I would kind of get it. similar to the pureview. I wonder if a camera with wifi and some software for social sharing wouldnt be more logical

You might not want to play Angry Birds on your camera (although you might!) More likely, you might want to do HDR in-camera, tag and edit your images in-camera, or automatically upload images to all your photo-sharing sites at once.

I think that developing a mass market mobile phone might be abit more work that you think. There's the engineering and the regulatory side of getting it apporoved in however many markets you want to sell it it.Plus establishing relations with the networks, where there might be 3 or 4 networks per market.Non trivial.If they are going to do that they really need a partner that has all that already.But yes it would be much better if it was a phone and they did partner up.

Yes, it's not a phone. Wow. You know, there are these devices out there that have android on them along with wifi WITHOUT data plans. They're called tablets, maybe you've heard of them? They sold millions of em last year. Maybe you already own one? I do.

And lots of tablets *do* have 3G and a data plan. Kinda depends what you want, right? And from reading the comments here, most people want these new Android cameras that are appearing to have 3G and phone functionality too.

Just because you don't seem to want that, there's no cause to be rude to other people expressing their wishes.

Digital cameras with capacitive touchscreens and fluid "smartphone-like" menu navigation are long overdue. I'm just not convinced this "compact camera + iPod touch" hybrid is what people were waiting for...

1/2.3" BSI CMOS sensor, just like the Pentax Q. I'm not expecting IQ to be nearly as good as the Q, but it should be decent.

Speaking of the Q, it's odd that DPR never reviewed the Q, or plans to, since the Pentax Q is the first ILC to ever feature such a sensor. And I don't know if anyone has ever downloaded DNGs from the Q, but they are superb. But I guess the powers that be here at DPR, and the sensor size fanatics discounted the Q right off the bat. Pity as it's a fascinating little camera with outstanding IQ and a huge fun factor. But I digress.

I hope this new Nikon has somewhere in the ballpark of the Q's image quality, and not the somewhat crunchy images we've seen from the P300.

The Pentax Q image quality isn't that great, even as base ISO. It's just a little better than average, with the standard prime lest at least. Completely outclassed by anything with a significantly larger sensor, from the Fuji X10 on up...

still it is interesting that dpreview has done several compact cameras since Q was available and clearly have no plans to do t he Q. I assume they would just use the Jeff Keller review if they cared in any way..which obviously they do not. too bad it is an absolutely adorable and fun camera esp. with the fish eye..

Most ICS ROMs are under 1GB. The RAZR ICS ROM is stated as ~340MB (http://www.phonearena.com/news/New-RAZR-ICS-leak-matches-file-size-from-Verizon-documents_id29587) while the Galaxy S3's ROM is significantly larger but still 785MB (http://news.softpedia.com/news/Samsung-GALAXY-S-III-Android-4-0-4-ICS-ROM-Leaks-Includes-S-Voice-TouchWiz-and-More-270644.shtml). I, myself, have been able to run a CyanogenMod Alpha of ICS on my Motorola Triumph which has 2GB of onboard memory.

Upgrading to the newest operating system is a matter of Nikon devoting the dev resources to porting the operating system over, or releasing the kernel to third-party developers to customize.

"Chrome was the Android's browser since it started shipping, what are you talking about?"

The default browser on Android is still called the "browser" or the "web browser". Chrome is an additional browser app that can be downloaded and installed, but only on phones with Android 4.0 and above.

Wow so many ppl ranting about not having a phone functionality in this model!It is the first Android based digital camera- This opens up a hell lot of avenues for app developers to come up with creative photography apps. Imagine something like Instagram on a PROPER camera! This is just the beginning of a new range of cameras and thumbs up to Nikon for coming first.Infact Samsung should have come up with this way back, with its feet in the Digital Camera as well as Smartphone business. And for all the ppl cursing Nikon about not including a phone in this, dare to do the same with Apple! Why doesn't anyone question the Wifi model for not having 3G or ability to make calls? Bcos that is Apple and we are all fanboys! Come on and get real folks!

complain, complain, complain.So may whiney comments already, Geezzz. Someone had to go first, so good on Nikon. I already do have an Android phone with the typical poor phone camera. So I also have a little Nikon AW100 that I carry around a lot (especially fly fishing) just to be sure a have a camera with me. So this would mean one less thing to carry. Will they get better, sure, but for now and at the rate I buy new phones, this looks pretty good to me.

Just from the # of people thinking that this is a phone on this forum, I think Nikon REALLY need to clarify that this is not a phone, or they will have a lot of disaapointed customers and returns on this camera.

DPR - smartphones do allow extra memory to be added. No idea why you think otherwise.

Consumer wants : Phone with good camera.

Consumer gets : average camera with ... whoops.

It's still asking the consumer to carry two devices when they want one.

Consumers don't care if it can run Android, let alone which version of Android. It could run DOS if it did what they wanted.

Can't tell if this thing has an audio-out socket. If it doesn't it would be a HUGE fail, as that would mean no MP3 playing.

In case Nikon et al haven't noticed all Apple or Nokia or the rest of them have to do to make a better product is add a zoom lens in a phone. All Nikon et all have to do is build a phone, get it certified and make deals with carriers, which is a lot harder.

Some of the more recent Android, Windows Phone, and all iPhone smartphones are opting to not use expandable memory. They are the minority but they do include high profile ones like the Galaxy Nexus and Nokia Lumia 900.

This could due to a want for less failing hardware pieces, simpler file systems and file management, or generally more control over the user experience (i.e., not having to make sure the user has XX MB of free onboard storage), or something completely different.

@Richard Shih - The real reason some smartphones (e.g. Apple) don't have expandable memory is so their producers have a simple mechanism for price discrimination (e.g. charging $100 extra for a piddly 16gb more storage space). It's difficult to price discriminate via different amounts of storage memory if expandable memory slots are allowed.

One thing everyone seems to be overlooking: WiFi is NOT everywhere. In fact, once you go outside, it's pretty much gone for sure. Nobody who buys this camera is ever going to take pictures outside?

The use-it-anywhere appeal of smartphone cameras is based on the fact that they DO work anywhere there's phone service -- if no WiFi is available, they can fall back on their 3G or 4G connection. That's not an option for any WiFi-only device... at best, it would let you connect to your smartphone and use THAT to do your uploads. Janky.

When somebody brings out a real camera with a slot for a SIM card, THEN I might start getting excited...

WiFi not being everywhere isn't really the problem (although it is a problem, I agree). This is essentially an iPod Touch -- except running Android and with a much better camera and (I'm assuming) VASTLY worse battery life. If I could use it all day as a pocket computer/music player it might have some value. But it's a third rate Android device, it's big and fat and ugly and has no juice.

Nikon sucks at software. This is a really dumb direction for Nikon since it plays to its weaknesses.

how does it play to their weaknesses? the software is being done by Google et al, exactly not by Nikon because as you said they suck at software. The photoshop touch app is done by adobe not nikon. the real question i have is does this device really have the horsepowr to run photoshop touch or instagram? will have to wait for the real review to find out..

It's a great concept BUT I wish they would have decreased the number of pixels in order to improve low light / high ISO performance and file size for uploading. 16MP Files are too big to upload and FB will shrink them anyways

A camera driven by a general purpose operating system is a fantastic combination. So is a camera that can directly connect to Facebook, 500px, or whatever, even if it is not a general purpose computer or pda.

Purely for personal reasons, my two issues with this particular one is: (a) I prefer iOS to Android, and (b) I prefer DSLRs to compacts.

Now if Apple got into bed with Nikon, and developed a version of the D800 with iOS, and special support for wireless "tethered" shooting using iPad as the live view preview screen and control surface, THEN I would be seriously excited.

Is it known what SoC this camera is running? That would be interesting to know. Also, I don't think CyanogenMod will be introducing JB very soon to this device. There will be some serious propriatary drivers for the camera and I don't think that will be reverse-engineered very soon. I do think it is a cool concept and am very keen to find out more.

It seems like a brave new step. a big step perhaps. One we've been expecting and desiring. Now it's here... I feel no desire for it, and can't think why I'd want it. But that's because it's a consumer cam. Maybe. So if this was in the P7700 instead (or some other prosumer or ILC), why would I want it, bearing in mind that I shoot raw and use my desktop to edit my photos? What apps would I be able to make use of, I wonder. I can kind of imagine what they might be, but this morning I can't imagine me using them. I'm a photographer. Do I want to distort people's faces and make doggy birthday cards? And do I really want to mess about learning how to use Android when I have an iPhone in my pocket? Suddenly I'm not sure I see the point. Isn't it a bit like having Android on my washing machine? Cool but ultimately useless. I don't know.

Or you can buy this Nikon, plus a simple little phone that runs for a whole week on one charge and never worry about not being to make a call when you have to when the smartphone run out of battery. You would then be able to talk to someone on the phone while at the same time checking your diary or some contact details, or read some email that you are talking about, or take a photo of something, all while talking. You can also buy that simple phone outright and not tied to some plan or you can change phone at any time or use different phone depending on where or what you do.

Why didn't Nikon put a phone in it too? You don't need the modem for data connectivity for 3G/4G for a 1st gen product, but at least make it so it can make a phone call in order for someone to actually think about carrying this as the sole gadget on the go.

Then it needs a much larger battery, baseband chip, antenna (with good reception), microphone located where people talk into it, SIM card reader, more powerful CPU to run Android 4.0/4.1, and more RAM. All that adds quite a lot to the price. It stops being an enhanced P&S camera with a comparable price and instead costs $100 or $200 more and is competing with other phones, but carriers won't be willing to subsidize it so it costs five or six hundred dollars.

This is a dud. No one is going to give up their smart phone for this, or use this instead of their smart phone. The only room for innovation in this space is to provide a complete API for the camera itself, and let the market develop the apps. Nikon missed the opportunity.

It's not a phone, for pete's sake. Nikon never intended it to replace your phone. It's only radio is wifi. It offers an alternative interface for the camera and, if software developers embrace it, the ability to do tricks other phones can't do.

How do you know there's no API? The camera's not even released yet, and there's no documentation available yet. Chill.

I love the idea. When I saw the headline, I mentally thought, "Sold!" Then I read a bit more. Android 2.3? Are they serious? Someone tell Nikon that Android 2.3 was released in 2010, and they're on 4.1 now.

I disagree. Going back that far is asking for trouble. Software is written for the latest version of Android, not for old versions. Things that work perfectly on Android 4.1 could easily be buggy on 2.3. I'm not interested in going back to 2010.

2.3 can run smoothly with a processor that uses less battery compared to 4 and 4.1. Camera batteries have been lower capacity than smartphones for years. Nikon evidently wasn't ready to drastically re-engineer the guts of the camera to fit a large, flat smartphone battery.

the primary diff btwn 2.3 and 4 is the support for tablets (i.e. fragments) and screens of differing pixel density.I personally think 2.3 was a good choice for this kind of device and it is appropriate for a $350 device.Don't get me wrong, a more expensive and more capable device is surely coming if not from Nikon from Samsung and/or the others.so i am sure you will get JB eventually.

As far as I'm aware, the SCH-W880 was only sold in Korea. The Polaroid SC1630 I've only seen in write-ups dating back to Feb. 2012. Neither of these products can be found on B&H's website. In my opinion thus Nikon is the first company to actually deliver, as you can pre-order your S800c as we speak!

As an amateur photographer and long-time Android user (I currently have a Galaxy Nexus) I have to say I am very excited about the possibilities of this camera. This would be the perfect device for an internet (facebook) obsessed geek on holiday. I'm going to Japan on holiday in a few days and wish it were available now!